“Sorry, no chance,” Marty said. “Not without painting a giant target on my back.”
Lucas leaned back in his seat, tapped his fingers against the edge of the table, and contemplated his options. Marty went back to his nachos while Josh remained oddly quiet, his gaze fixed on the soda fizzing in his mug. After a few moments, Lucas reached out and pressed STOP on the digital recorder, but he left it on the table just in case.
Josh spoke up only after the red light of the recorder went out. “What if it’s true?”
“What if what’s true?” Marty gave his coworker a look.
“The stuff Halcomb is saying, the stuff about eternal life? If Hillstone mentioned it in his letter, he must have gotten it from Halcomb. Maybe Halcomb told him that if he killed himself, he’d live forever or something. I mean, millions of people believe they’ll be granted eternal life as long as they repent for their sins and love their neighbor and go to church, right? I was taught that stuff when I was a kid. Halcomb isn’t, like, reinventing the wheel, you know?”
Marty frowned at his younger cohort. “There’s a difference between believing in God and believing some guy sitting in a supermax, Josh. Besides, the eternal life stuff isn’t coming from Halcomb, right, boss?” Marty gave Lucas a questioning look.
Lucas nodded. “Halcomb hasn’t said a word to anyone about his true beliefs,” he said. “Even if Hillstone did talk about it in his letter, we’re only speculating that he got it from Halcomb.”
“So if you want to know what his true belief is on eternal life,” Marty said, his gaze focused back on Josh, “I guess you’d have to ask him yourself.”
“But there’s something about Halcomb,” Josh said. “Something you can’t put your finger on. He’s creepy, right? Everyone thinks so.”
“Yeah, creepy as hell,” Marty confirmed.
“Well, what if he’s that way because there’s something about him . . . something we as regular people can’t understand? I mean, how do you convince someone to kill themselves?” Josh shot a look at Lucas, as though Lucas had the answer to how mind control worked. Lucas shook his head to say that he didn’t know.
“We as regular people,” Marty repeated, looking more restless by the second. “What does that make Halcomb, an irregular one?”
“Well, yeah,” Josh scoffed. “I mean, look at him.”
“Point taken,” Marty murmured, “but that’s not what you meant.”
Josh said nothing.
“You meant regular as in we’re just everyday joes while he’s something more . . . which sounds to me like some dangerous thinking.”
Morales lifted his shoulders in a faint shrug. “All I’m saying is that maybe there’s something more to it than just, like, parlor tricks. Maybe this guy isn’t what he looks like.”
“Which is what?” Marty asked.
“Crazy,” Josh said.
A chill crab-walked up Lucas’s spine. Now there was something to contemplate: what if Jeffrey Halcomb wasn’t crazy?
If he was preaching eternal life . . . what if it was true?
37
* * *
Sunday, April 4, 1982
Eleven Months, Ten Days Before the Sacrament
ONLY THREE OF them went over—Avis, Jeffrey, and Gypsy. Arriving at Maggie’s small bungalow tucked into the trees, Avis led them around the side of the house to the back sliding glass door. Just as predicted, it was unlocked.
Somewhere inside the house, Maggie and Eloise slept. At least that’s what she assumed, but Eloise’s visits had become few and far between. Maggie always had an excuse—day care or Grandma’s. Part of her hoped that Eloise wasn’t home, just in case something happened, just in case something went wrong.
Avis’s heart thudded in her chest at the thought of being caught. What would she say? She justified the break-in with the fact that they were stealing something that Maggie could easily replace. They were in it for boxes of mac and cheese and cans of Campbell’s soup, not for money or jewelry or anything that held sentimental value. Avis told herself that Maggie would have given up the things Gypsy was piling into paper grocery bags if she had only asked. But Jeff had made it clear that asking wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about whether she could bat her eyelashes and score some handouts. This was about having the guts to go through with the things the family had to do to survive.
If stealing some groceries was the entry fee to a life of companionship and acceptance, Avis was all in. She couldn’t let a little guilt get in the way, not even if the person she was betraying was her own best friend.
It took them less than a couple of minutes to load up three grocery bags full of dried food and canned goods. They took a few packs of meat from the freezer for good measure and some cellophaned leftovers for Shadow as well. Other than that, they left the place just the way they found it. Avis knew Maggie would notice so much missing. But she would have handed it over if I had asked, she told herself. If she blames me, I’ll just explain. Right. Because saying that Jeff had talked her into sneaking into a house in the dead of night would go over well. Because confessing that she had to do it or the group would know she wasn’t serious would paint her as a loyal compatriot. If she said any of those things, they would deem her a defector. And then they’d leave her behind, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do without them.
Except three bags of groceries for ten people wasn’t much, and Maggie didn’t have a dog, which got Shadow nothing but scraps. When Avis muttered something to that effect in the car on the return trip, Gypsy stated that they’d simply “have to get more.”